Department of Chemistry, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
Department of Biological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907.
CBE Life Sci Educ. 2018 Spring;17(1). doi: 10.1187/cbe.17-02-0030.
To keep biochemistry instruction current and relevant, it is crucial to expose students to cutting-edge scientific research and how experts reason about processes governed by thermodynamics and kinetics such as protein folding and dynamics. This study focuses on how experts explain their research into this topic with the intention of informing instruction. Previous research has modeled how expert biologists incorporate research methods, social or biological context, and analogies when they talk about their research on mechanisms. We used this model as a guiding framework to collect and analyze interview data from four experts. The similarities and differences that emerged from analysis indicate that all experts integrated theoretical knowledge with their research context, methods, and analogies when they explained how phenomena operate, in particular by mapping phenomena to mathematical models; they explored different processes depending on their explanatory aims, but readily transitioned between different perspectives and explanatory models; and they explained thermodynamic and kinetic concepts of relevance to protein folding in different ways that aligned with their particular research methods. We discuss how these findings have important implications for teaching and future educational research.
为了使生物化学教学保持与时俱进且与现实相关，让学生接触前沿的科学研究以及专家如何根据热力学和动力学（如蛋白质折叠和动力学）等原理推理过程至关重要。本研究聚焦于专家如何解释他们在这一主题上的研究，以期为教学提供信息。先前的研究已经建立了模型，研究专家在谈论他们关于机制的研究时如何整合研究方法、社会或生物背景以及类比。我们使用该模型作为指导框架，从四位专家那里收集和分析访谈数据。分析得出的相似点和不同点表明，所有专家在解释现象如何运作时，都将理论知识与研究背景、方法和类比结合起来，特别是通过将现象映射到数学模型；他们根据解释目的探索不同的过程，但可以轻松地在不同视角和解释模型之间转换；并且他们以与特定研究方法一致的方式，用不同的方式解释与蛋白质折叠相关的热力学和动力学概念。我们讨论了这些发现对教学和未来教育研究的重要意义。
